Kevin Bronson on August 15th, 2014

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New York-born, Santa Monica-reared Johanna Samuels writes smart songs about the notion of emotional truth, the most important of which might be that there is no truth, only a hope for equilibrium. Her forthright and often disquieting style, first heard on 2012’s “Giant Fantasy Life” EP, was cultivated in the cafés of New York City, where she attended college after graduating Santa Monica High, and she made her debut full-length “Double Bind” in and around Brooklyn with drummer/producer Fen Ikner. Of the lyrically rich “Double Bind,” she says: “While recording the album, a good friend had described the term ‘Double Bind:’ a dynamic wherein two emotional demands are met but consequently negate each other, leaving one person to feel trapped.” The song “From Above You” faintly recalls (at least in POV), Janis Joplin’s “Women Is Losers.” After all, songwriters forever will wrestle with the question of who comes out on top.

||| Live: Johanna Samuels celebrates her album release with a show Aug. 26 at the Hotel Café.

Photo by Ryan Pierce